Are those DEATHBERRIES?
by Smokefeather
Summary: A humerous oneshot about a pretty kooky cat and her mentor. Please R&R!


**I do not own Warriors, Erin Hunter does. Wait, is this even required? If I owned Warriors, I wouldn't be writing on FANfiction.**

Thymepelt, a senior warrior, was starting to get annoyed as he watched his apprentice.

"Come on, Lightpaw, hurry up!" he yowled, doing the best to keep anger from his tone. He watched his small, pale-colored apprentice, who was lagging behind, amble along lazily, a dreamy look on her white-whiskered face, her head obviously in the clouds. Had she even heard him? He doubted it. It was unbelievable. She was already nine moons, and still she refused to learn anything, preferring...well, whatever she was thinking about right now to fighting and hunting. How could this be?

The crimson-leaved trees, warning the cats that leafbare was not far away, looked down on him disapprovingly. Their leaves stirred in a slight breeze as if to tell him he should be able to teach her better than this. But he had been a mentor before. There had never been any problems like this with his apprentices. Why was Lightpaw acting like this? No, a better way to put that question would simply be; why was Lightpaw anything at all?

Thymepelt was so deep in thought that he didn't notice Lightpaw had come up next to him until he smelled her scent less than an inch away. Brushing aside the matter, he turned to face her.

"Lightpaw!" he meowed sternly, noticing for the first time that Lightpaw appeared to be wearing some sort of vine around her neck. "What took you so long--and what IS that?"

His apprentice glanced down to what Thymepelt was looking at, as if seeing it for the first time.

"Oh!" she meowed, giving a half-smile as she realized what he had been looking at. "That's just my my necklace of deathberries. I felt that cats should have a little more color; and isn't this just a lovely red color? I made some for the other apprentices, too, but they didn't want them. Imagine! Not wanting more color. They're so dull."

Thymepelt's eyes widened, and he took a step back.

"Lightpaw! They're _deathberries!_ Take it off right now!" He couldn't believe a cat could be so silly. "Don't you know what deathberries _do_?!"

Lightpaw tilted her head, considering.

"Well, for one thing," she meowed, "they can kill cats if they eat them. And they can also make lovely necklaces. Oh, yes, and sometimes ShadowClan medicine cats use them to speed up death in cats that have been badly injured and are suffering. That's all I know of. Is there something I'm forgetting?"

Thymepelt stared at her.

"Er, well," he admitted, thinking rapidly, "you didn't forget anything. But weren't you listening to yourself? Deathberries are poisonous! You're putting yourself at great risk! You must take them off!"

Absentmindedly Lightpaw scratched behind her ear.

"Well, not really, if you think about it," she replied, still scratching, now more vigorously, "Don't you see? You wouldn't be complaining if it was a necklace of juniper berries, would you? And, you see, if for some reason a deathberry flew through the air and landed on your head, it would feel the same as a juniper berry flying through the air and landing on your head. It's really the same. That's logic."

Dumbfounded, Thymepelt stared at her.

"I don't particularly see the logic," he meowed, "but I'm going to let it pass until we can go back and consult the medicine cat. Be _careful_, though. We don't want anything bad happening. "

"Mmmmhmm" purred Lightpaw. "Don't worry about it."

Thymepelt couldn't help but feel this was all too risky, but shrugged it off. At least it wasn't dog teeth around her neck. Now THAT would frighten him. Very much.

"Anyway," he meowed, taking care not to step on a fallen deathberry from Lightpaw's necklace, "today we will be doing battle training."

"Battle training?" Lightpaw meowed doubtfully. "That doesn't sound too good. I don't really think we should fight, really. What would StarClan say?"

Thymepelt frowned.

"You see," he meowed, carefully thinking the matter over to make sure he didn't miss anything, "StarClan understands that battles need to be fought sometimes. And the warrior code accepts battles, too."

Lightpaw grimaced.

"But what if we have to meet StarClan in battle sometime? I bet then they won't be so keen on condoning battles."

Thymepelt looked at Lightpaw, shocked at what this slight yellow she-cat could think up.

"We would never have to meet StarClan in battle! StarClan is always at peace with us!"

Lightpaw looked reproachfully at her mentor, shaking her head.

"Remember what a smart warrior always says," she cautioned. "No matter how long a clan is peaceful or allied with you, no matter how good friends you are with the cats in the clan, there is ALWAYS a risk of them attacking you. You ALWAYS need to be on your guard. So, you see, StarClan could be tricking us. They might attack us any day. But the thing is, that if we could just work our differences and our problems out peacefully, it would be so much easier. Don't you think? Wouldn't that be great? Right? Thymepelt, right? Oi, can you hear me? Right? Right? Right??"

Thymepelt had given up. This apprentice was crazy. There was nothing he could do about it. As he gazed at her helplessly, he suddenly heard a soft rustling in the pine needles about a foot away. M_ouse, _he thought. But he needed to find a way to tell Lightpaw that he couldn't be her mentor anymore, and for that he needed his full concentration. What could he say...

Suddenly, Lightpaw, without even moving anything else, flashed out a paw. When she brought it back up next to her, there was a mouse on the end of it. The mouse Thymepelt had heard, but not gotten.

"How did you _do_ that?" he gasped. The way Lightpaw had just caught the mouse without even paying attention astounded him. Could she really hunt? The way he had tried to teach her hadn't worked at all, she had made such a racket everything heard her coming. Her jump was off. She landed about five mouselengths away from the prey. But then, how had she caught this so effortlessly?

Lightpaw shrugged. "I was hungry," she meowed, unaware that what she had just done had been amazing. "Yeah?"

Maybe he should keep her as his apprentice after all. Give her one more chance. If he wanted to train Lightpaw, though, he knew she would come with everything. Distracted-ness, cluelessness, deathberries, and all. And yes, crazy-ness. But if she knew that all and could still catch that mouse so effortlessly...maybe it was worth it. Maybe he was just going about it the wrong way. Maybe, if he trained her right, she could be a really great--though probably rather queer--warrior.

It was at that moment that Thymepelt resolved to stick with Lightpaw as his apprentice. For better or worse, he was going to train her. And he was going to do it in a way that she really benefited from it.

"Lightpaw!" he meowed, exited to tell her that they would be taking a new approach. "Lightpaw, Light--"

He stopped abruptly. Lightpaw was in dream-mode again, her eyes glazed over. She appeared to not have heard him...

Thymepelt groaned. He hated resolutions.

**Hullo! My new oneshot. I hope you find it funny... it's supposed to be humorous. Not quite laugh-out-loud funny, just bring-a-smile-to-your-face funny. Anyway, meow! Review!**

**--Smokefeather**


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